I Don’t Want To End Up Under The Bridge
By Yuvraj Sehgal

I don’t want to end up under the bridge
Sometimes when I feel depressed
Sometimes when I need uplifting
Sometimes when I am despondent
Sometimes when I feel melancholy
Sometimes when I feel woebegone
I let myself go to my happy place
I let mother nature take over
I let the ripples in the river talk happy into to me
I let the leaves which rattle in the wind talk to me
I let the wind blow away the bad thoughts
I let the birds singing relax me
I don’t want to end up under the bridge

Reflection:

I published an inspired by poem in response to the song Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
I published an inspired by poem because I had this song stuck in my head which was Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I was thinking about how the song would be different if I make the actions that are written in the songs lyrics positive instead of negative. In the quote from the song the singer is referring to taking drugs after he makes a bad decision, “Under the bridge downtown / Is were I drew some blood / Under the bridge downtown / I could not get enough.” In my poem I take a negative situation and find a positive solution like in this example, “Sometimes when I feel woebegone / I let myself go to my happy place.”
The tone of my poem at first is negative because I wanted to establish a depressing environment, “Sometimes when I feel depressed / Sometimes when I need uplifting / Sometimes when I am despondent / Sometimes when feel melancholy.” The tone at the middle of my poem changes to a hopeful feeling because I wanted to portray that you can have a negative situation and still have a positive solution, “I let myself go to my happy place / I let mother nature take over / I Let the ripples in the river talk happy into to me / I let the leaves which rattle in the wind talk to me”
The theme of my poem is that a in times of sadness you can’t back down, and you need to think positive so that positive things will happen. If you think negative your entire life will start to go in a downward spiral, and at that point it will be hard to recover, but if you can fix it before it reaches that stage you will be in a better place than where you started from. This is my theme because in my poem when I am sad I think of happy thoughts so that I can handle the situation in a positive way, “Sometimes when I feel melancholy / Sometimes when I feel woebegone / I let myself go to my happy place / I let mother nature take over.”
An example of figurative language in my poem is a metaphor when I say, “I don’t want to end up under the bridge.” This helps add another way to think about the main idea of my poem so it is easier for the reader to form a connection, it works like an analogy because I am comparing being under a bridge to being in a bad place in life which corresponds together. Another example of figurative language in my poem is personification when I state, “I let the ripples in the river talk happy into to me.” This is effective in my poem because it explains the reader how the sound of the river flowing and it’s waves crashing calms me down because my poem says, “I let myself go to my happy place / I let mother nature take over,” which means that nature is what helps me calm down and when I need to revise the decisions I have made, I go to nature.
Revisions:
1.) I changed “sad” to “melancholy.” Explanation: I made this revision to enhance the vocabulary to more adult and teen like terminology so it can be used for that specific audience, plus I couldn’t use sad 5 times, so I used synonyms for sad to make it sound more interesting.
2.) I also changed “shake” to “rattle.” Explanation: I made this revision to also make this for an older audience, plus I needed a more descriptive word to describe a sound rather than a motion and even though they are similar when we think of rattle we think of sound.

7. It was easy to write this poem because thinking positive is what most people
should do, but many people go down the wrong path which is the way the song
describes it. It was easy to write because I always thought and still think that
this song is a bad influence for young kids who have not yet learned how to
deal with there problems, so I thought it would be a great idea to show a better
solution to the problem.
8. I am extremely satisfied with my final product because it shows how kids and
adults should deal with issues, problems and hardships that they encounter on
a daily basis properly. My poem also builds good characteristics and core
values into kids and adults which will help prepare them for the future